By attempting to transform consumer behaviors the affirmative actually furthers capitalist development projects.
Timothy W. Luke, Department of Political Science Virginia Polytechnic Institute, March 18-22, 1997
(“The (Un)Wise (Ab)Use of Nature: Environmentalism as Globalized Consumerism?” Presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tim/tims/Tim528.PDF)
<<To explore the links between these tendencies, this investigation will advance in the following fashion. Having introduced these overarching themes, it first will consider the issue of Nature in today's fast capitalist global economy, suggesting that ecology and economy increasingly are becoming (con)fused in the geo-economic discourses guiding many decisionmakers today. Second, it suggests that the post-Cold War agendas of American geo-economics and geo-politics reveal new understandings of the Earth's ecologies, which have terraforming pretensions for the coming century. Third, it examines how the megatechnics of global production forged during the Second Industrial Revolution assume that mass consumerism, or what Baudrillard calls "consummativity," functions as a productive force; hence, any contemporary attempt to transform consumer preferences or behaviors during the still on-going Third Industrial Revolution, as mainstream environmentalism does, can constitute a move to further revolutionize/modernize/instrumentalize the means of production.
However, this break indicates that modern mass consumption, developing out of consummativity models first tested in the 1880s and 1890s, which have been immensely "consumptive" in their ends, is evolving toward new consummativity models in 1980s and 1990s, becoming now much more "consummational" in its goals. Fourth, it tentatively illustrates how four, well-established environmental 3 groups--Worldwatch, Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, and Nature Conservancy--may express aspects of this unusual new consummational consumerism in their activities. And, fifth, it concludes that mainstream American environmentalism, through its odd consumeristic turns, expresses the highest stages of contemporary capitalist development by pushing governmentality's "conduct of conduct" beyond consumptiveness in these networks of transnational capitalist production toward a more rational consummation of consumption in green industrial metabolisms.]]2-3
Environmentalist policy play into the global scheme of discipline and regulation. Management of the environment sets up an ecological hierarchy where nature becomes a tool that the rational state administers.
Timothy W. Luke, Department of Political Science Virginia Polytechnic Institute, March 18-22, 1997
(“The (Un)Wise (Ab)Use of Nature: Environmentalism as Globalized Consumerism?” Presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tim/tims/Tim528.PDF)
<<I. Fusing Ecology/Economy: Geo-Economics + Geo-Politics
A political, economic, and technical incitement to talk about ecology, environments, and Nature, first surfaced as the social project of "environmentalism" during the 1960s in the United States, but it plainly has become far more pronounced in the 1990s. Not much of this takes the form of general theory, because most of its practices have been instead steered toward analysis, stock taking, and classification in quantitative, causal, and humanistic studies. Nonetheless, one can follow Foucault by exploring how mainstream environmentalism in theUnited Statesoperates as "a whole series of different tactics that combined in varying proportions the objective of disciplining the body and that of regulating populations."3 The project of "sustainability," whether one speaks of sustainable development, growth or use in relation to Earth's ecologies, embodies this new responsibility for the life processes in the American state's rationalized harmonization of political economy with global ecology as a form of green geo-politics.
These interconnections become even more intriguing in the aftermath of the Cold War. Having won the long twilight struggle against communist totalitarianism, the United States is governed by leaders who now see "Earth in the balance," arguing that global ecologies incarnate what is best and worst in the human spirit. On the one hand, economists, industrialists, and political leaders increasingly tend to represent the strategic terrain of the post-1991 world system as one on which all nations must compete ruthlessly to control the future development of the world economy by developing new technologies, dominating more markets, and exploiting every national economic asset. However, the phenomenon of "failed states," ranging from basket cases like Rwanda, Somalia or Angola to crippled entities like Ukraine, Afghanistan or Kazakhstan, often is attributed to the severe environmental frictions associated with the (un)wise (ab)use of Nature by ineffective strategies for creating economic growth.4 Consequently, environmental protection issues--ranging from resource conservation to sustainable development to ecosystem restoration--are getting greater consideration in the name of creating jobs, maintaining growth, or advancing technological development. 4 Taking "ecology" into account, then, creates discourses on "the environment" that derive not only from morality, but from rationality as well. As humanity has faced "the limits of growth" and heard "the population bomb" ticking away, ecologies and environments became something more than what one must judge morally; they became things that state must administer. Ecology has evolved into "a public potential; it called for management procedures; it had to be taken charge of by analytical discourses," as it was recognized in its environmentalized manifestations to be "a police matter"--"not the repression of disorder, but an ordered maximization of collective and individual forces."5>>
Stories of environmental catastrophe limit our responses and perceptions of the problem. The discouse of their stories maintain survival.
Holly Doremus, Professor of Law, University of California at Davis. J.D., University of California at Berkeley, Ph.D., Cornell University, Winter 2000 (“The Rhetoric and Reality of Nature Protection: Toward a New Discourse” Washington & Lee Law Review 57 11)
The stories we tell to explain and justify our view of the relationship of humanity with nature are important determinants of the policies we adopt and the attitudes we develop. To date we have relied on three primary discourses to explain why and how the law should protect nature. These discourses are all valid. Nature is an important material resource for human use, a unique esthetic resource for human enjoyment, and most people agree that we have some kind of ethical obligation to protect nature.
While the discourses themselves are both valid and inevitable, the forms in which they have been brought to the political debate limit our ability to respond to, and even our ability to fully perceive, the problem of nature protection. The ecological horror story encourages us to view nature solely as a bundle of resources for human consumption or convenience, to rely on cost-benefit accounting in making decisions about what parts of nature we should protect, and to ignore the loss of nature short of catastrophic ecological collapse. The wilderness story teaches us that nature is defined by our absence, and encourages us to establish a limited number of highly protected reserves. The story of Noah's ark allows us to believe we are facing a short-term crisis, resolvable through straightforward temporary measures.
None of these stories addresses the crux of the modern nature problem, which is where people fit into nature. In order to address the boundary conflicts, distributional issues, and conflicts between discourses that currently plague our efforts to protect nature, we must find ways to address those issues in our political conversation. We already have a substantial number of building blocks that could contribute to a new discourse about people and nature. Constructing such a discourse should be a high priority in the new millennium for those who hope nature will survive into the next one.
By attempting to transform consumer behaviors the affirmative actually furthers capitalist development projects.
Timothy W. Luke, Department of Political Science Virginia Polytechnic Institute, March 18-22, 1997(“The (Un)Wise (Ab)Use of Nature: Environmentalism as Globalized Consumerism?” Presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tim/tims/Tim528.PDF)
<<To explore the links between these tendencies, this investigation will advance in the following fashion. Having introduced these overarching themes, it first will consider the issue of Nature in today's fast capitalist global economy, suggesting that ecology and economy increasingly are becoming (con)fused in the geo-economic discourses guiding many decisionmakers today. Second, it suggests that the post-Cold War agendas of American geo-economics and geo-politics reveal new understandings of the Earth's ecologies, which have terraforming pretensions for the coming century. Third, it examines how the megatechnics of global production forged during the Second Industrial Revolution assume that mass consumerism, or what Baudrillard calls "consummativity," functions as a productive force; hence, any contemporary attempt to transform consumer preferences or behaviors during the still on-going Third Industrial Revolution, as mainstream environmentalism does, can constitute a move to further revolutionize/modernize/instrumentalize the means of production.
However, this break indicates that modern mass consumption, developing out of consummativity models first tested in the 1880s and 1890s, which have been immensely "consumptive" in their ends, is evolving toward new consummativity models in 1980s and 1990s, becoming now much more "consummational" in its goals. Fourth, it tentatively illustrates how four, well-established environmental 3 groups--Worldwatch, Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, and Nature Conservancy--may express aspects of this unusual new consummational consumerism in their activities. And, fifth, it concludes that mainstream American environmentalism, through its odd consumeristic turns, expresses the highest stages of contemporary capitalist development by pushing governmentality's "conduct of conduct" beyond consumptiveness in these networks of transnational capitalist production toward a more rational consummation of consumption in green industrial metabolisms.]]2-3
Environmentalist policy play into the global scheme of discipline and regulation. Management of the environment sets up an ecological hierarchy where nature becomes a tool that the rational state administers.
Timothy W. Luke, Department of Political Science Virginia Polytechnic Institute, March 18-22, 1997(“The (Un)Wise (Ab)Use of Nature: Environmentalism as Globalized Consumerism?” Presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tim/tims/Tim528.PDF)
<<I. Fusing Ecology/Economy: Geo-Economics + Geo-Politics
A political, economic, and technical incitement to talk about ecology, environments, and Nature, first surfaced as the social project of "environmentalism" during the 1960s in the United States, but it plainly has become far more pronounced in the 1990s. Not much of this takes the form of general theory, because most of its practices have been instead steered toward analysis, stock taking, and classification in quantitative, causal, and humanistic studies. Nonetheless, one can follow Foucault by exploring how mainstream environmentalism in the United States operates as "a whole series of different tactics that combined in varying proportions the objective of disciplining the body and that of regulating populations."3 The project of "sustainability," whether one speaks of sustainable development, growth or use in relation to Earth's ecologies, embodies this new responsibility for the life processes in the American state's rationalized harmonization of political economy with global ecology as a form of green geo-politics.
These interconnections become even more intriguing in the aftermath of the Cold War. Having won the long twilight struggle against communist totalitarianism, the United States is governed by leaders who now see "Earth in the balance," arguing that global ecologies incarnate what is best and worst in the human spirit. On the one hand, economists, industrialists, and political leaders increasingly tend to represent the strategic terrain of the post-1991 world system as one on which all nations must compete ruthlessly to control the future development of the world economy by developing new technologies, dominating more markets, and exploiting every national economic asset. However, the phenomenon of "failed states," ranging from basket cases like Rwanda, Somalia or Angola to crippled entities like Ukraine, Afghanistan or Kazakhstan, often is attributed to the severe environmental frictions associated with the (un)wise (ab)use of Nature by ineffective strategies for creating economic growth.4 Consequently, environmental protection issues--ranging from resource conservation to sustainable development to ecosystem restoration--are getting greater consideration in the name of creating jobs, maintaining growth, or advancing technological development. 4
Taking "ecology" into account, then, creates discourses on "the environment" that derive not only from morality, but from rationality as well. As humanity has faced "the limits of growth" and heard "the population bomb" ticking away, ecologies and environments became something more than what one must judge morally; they became things that state must administer. Ecology has evolved into "a public potential; it called for management procedures; it had to be taken charge of by analytical discourses," as it was recognized in its environmentalized manifestations to be "a police matter"--"not the repression of disorder, but an ordered maximization of collective and individual forces."5>>
Stories of environmental catastrophe limit our responses and perceptions of the problem. The discouse of their stories maintain survival.
Holly Doremus, Professor of Law, University of California at Davis. J.D., University of California at Berkeley, Ph.D., Cornell University, Winter 2000 (“The Rhetoric and Reality of Nature Protection: Toward a New Discourse” Washington & Lee Law Review 57 11)The stories we tell to explain and justify our view of the relationship of humanity with nature are important determinants of the policies we adopt and the attitudes we develop. To date we have relied on three primary discourses to explain why and how the law should protect nature. These discourses are all valid. Nature is an important material resource for human use, a unique esthetic resource for human enjoyment, and most people agree that we have some kind of ethical obligation to protect nature.
While the discourses themselves are both valid and inevitable, the forms in which they have been brought to the political debate limit our ability to respond to, and even our ability to fully perceive, the problem of nature protection. The ecological horror story encourages us to view nature solely as a bundle of resources for human consumption or convenience, to rely on cost-benefit accounting in making decisions about what parts of nature we should protect, and to ignore the loss of nature short of catastrophic ecological collapse. The wilderness story teaches us that nature is defined by our absence, and encourages us to establish a limited number of highly protected reserves. The story of Noah's ark allows us to believe we are facing a short-term crisis, resolvable through straightforward temporary measures.
None of these stories addresses the crux of the modern nature problem, which is where people fit into nature. In order to address the boundary conflicts, distributional issues, and conflicts between discourses that currently plague our efforts to protect nature, we must find ways to address those issues in our political conversation. We already have a substantial number of building blocks that could contribute to a new discourse about people and nature. Constructing such a discourse should be a high priority in the new millennium for those who hope nature will survive into the next one.